Around the globe again

Yesterday I began my review of a busy year by featuring the top ten cities I visited around the globe in 2010. The countdown continues from 5 to 1:

5) Serekunda, Gambia. Going to the Gambia in February was a profound learning experience for me. Serekunda is the largest city in one of the smallest and poorest African nations and it has to be one of my most inspirational experiences, ever. I was in Gambia looking after some of our education students, and we were on a week long comparative study tour. The students learnt a lot, but then so did I. The noisy bustle of the crowds, the colourful sights, the opressive heat and the huge variety of odours that assail your senses leaves you captivated, bewildered and excited all at once. We visited some of the schools and saw how teachers were coping with no money, few resources and the constant threat from sicknesses such as malaria. They are truly heroic. The pace of life in this tiny west african country is generally slow, but the people's minds are quick, and I had several opportunities to just sit down and talk to local people about life in the Gambia. People in the streets just approach you and want to talk. I learnt a lot about education, society and politics from these folks, and it was a rewarding but also at times a disturbing experience. To say my time in the Gambia changed my perspective on life does not do any justice to what I learnt there. Related blogpost.

4) Napier, New Zealand. During my Antipodean lecture tour in September and October, I arrived in Auckland airport direct from Brisbane and immediately boarded another, smaller turboprop flight which took me directly down to Hawke's Bay and the lovely town of Napier. Napier was the victim of a massive earthquake in 1931 which virtually destroyed it and killed 161 of its inhabitants. The centre and seafront of Napier was rebuilt shortly afterwards and many of the buildings retain their colourful Art Deco designs. It's one of the best preserved examples of this architectual period in existence, and wandering around the town is absolutely wonderful, even if you are an art philistine. I was collected from the airport and taken to my hotel by my good friend Joyce Seitzinger, who works at the Eastern Institute of Technology, who were also hosting the national New Zealand Applied Business Education conference. I had been invited to keynote the event and was accomodated in the best hotel in town, overlooking the seafront and the conference venue. I took a photo of the rising sun from my hotel room window the following morning and incorporated it into the title slide of my presentation, much to the delight of my audience. Related blogpost.

3) Nuremburg, Germany. It's the place you read about in all the Second World War history books. Nuremburg is famous for being the site of the Nazi war crime trials. But if the city was remembered just for that episode, it would be doing the city an injustice. Nuremburg is deep in the German region of Bavaria, and is such a charming place with its medieval castles and architecture that largley survived the allied bombing. I spent a pleasant afternoon in the warm May sunshine wandering around just sampling the atmosphere and enjoying a meal of bratwurst and potato salad, accompanied by a fine draft of the local brew. Speaking of beer - the famous Bergkirchweih beer festival in nearby Erlangen was quite a spectacle. With 11,000 seats, it is the largest beer festival in Europe. I was in Erlangen to meet with colleagues on the Concede project, and during our evening out at the beer festival I amused myself observing the antics of a local cast of thousands as they consumed large quantities of the falling down water and their collective bodily co-ordination gradually deteriorated. I stuck to drinking Radlers - the German eqivalent of shandy (beer and lemonade) just to be on the safe side. Related blogpost.

2) Auckland, New Zealand. I set foot in New Zealand in October, in the Southern Hemisphere springtime. It's just about as far away from the UK as you can get, but as I had already spent a week in Australia, I was just about acclimatised to springtime in Autumn and being 12 time zones away from my own. Auckland is the first city of New Zealand, but it's not the capital. It just behaves as if it is, sprawling for many miles across the northern tip of the North Island. I was well looked after by both my hosts (I was there to keynote the Auckland University of Technology conference) and also by my own family who live in Mount Wellington, an Auckland suburb. Highlights of my stay in Auckland were a trip to Devonport on the ferry, and the view from Mount Eden over the city. I also spent a lot of time with my cousins, second cousins, and their delightful children, who took a real shine to me. I was sorry to leave this wonderful place with its friendly people, but I will be back there again in December 2011. Related blogpost.

1) Valencia, Spain. This was my first visit to the beautiful Spanish city of Valencia, but I hope it will not be my last. I was in Valencia in June to speak at the EDEN Conference, and I was very impressed with the city. I stayed in a hotel just across the road from the stunning City of Arts and Sciences (Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias) and made three visits during the few days I was there, because I needed time to take it all in. To say it is visually stunning is an understatement. I have already blogged about it here, so I will leave you to appreciate the picture on the left which I hope captures just a little of the futuristic grandeur of the place. I met up with several people at the conference who I had always wanted to speak to, including George Siemens, Alex Pickett and Sebastien Fiedler, whom I spent some time with. The EDEN conference was as usual, a mix of new and old, challenging and mundane, and you took your chances, but the networking opportunities were excellent, and time 'off the pitch' was time well spent.

Around the globe again by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Around the globe

2010 has been another busy year for me, with a lot of travel and I estimate that I have more than 54,000 air miles to my name - more than twice around the globe. When I add all my hours travelling in trains and buses on top, and all the hours spent waiting in airport lounges, it makes me feel exhausted just thinking about it. But the travel is part of my job, and on reflection, it has all been worth it. I have met some extraordinary people, learnt some valuable lessons and have visited some incredibly beautiful and captivating places. Here are the first 5 of my top ten interesting cities of 2010 (I will post my top 5 tomorrow):

10 =) Budapest, Hungary. Budapest is always beautiful, no matter what time of year you visit. On my previous 2 visits, the city was basking in the sunshine of midsummer. This time we were shivering in close to zero temperatures of early winter. I was in Budapest to keynote the EDEN Research Workshop, and also to meet with colleagues on the Concede (user generated content) project. This time I stayed on the Pest side of the river for the first time, and spent some time in the freezing air wandering around some of the winding backstreets of the city. I came across several Bohemian cafes where student life had a high profile. This is a picture I took looking across from the Pest to the Buda side of the Danube, with the Firsherman's Bastion (Varhegy) in the distance and two of the popular river launches in foreground. There are several universities clustered along the banks of the Danube, and the nightlife is vibrant as a result. I noticed that just as I had seen during my summer visits to Budapest, people still sit outside to eat and drink in the cafes and bars here. They just wrap up warm and sit huddled together underneath the heaters. Related blog post.

10 =) Helsinki, Finland. Yes, I know I said this would be my top ten, but this is my way of squeezing eleven favourite cities into a top ten blog post. This was also my third visit to the capital of Finland, and again as in previous years, I was priviledged to be there just after the midsummer solstice when the sun in the Northern hemisphere is at it's highest. You need to personally experience the white nights of Scandinavia to properly appreciate how amazing they are. It's difficult to sleep at night unless you have some heavy curtains, because there is no night - only twilight for a few hours. I was invited to Helsinki to serve on a two day panel of experts as we assessed over 4 dozen applications for educational research grants provided by the Academy of Finland. It was hard work but a lot of fun and very fulfilling, as we selected several worthy research projects and signed off several million Euros of research funding for education that day. I took a walk along the southern quayside during my last day in the city, and saw some wonderful views, including this old trawler vessel, now converted into a fun riverside restaurant and bar. Related blog post.

9) Leeds, England. Compared to the other locations in my top ten, Leeds may not appear to be particularly silubrious. But you really need to explore the city to discover that it has a lot to offer everyone, whatever your entertainment, cultural or gastronomic tastes. The area I stayed in, around the canal area, is stunning, with extravagant outdoor lighting and some stunning architecture too. I was in Leeds last year to Keynote a Higher Education Academy conference at Leeds Metropolitan University. I enjoyed my visit then, and I enjoyed it just as much this time, where I was keynote speaker for the Txttools Let's talk about TXT event, on the University of Leeds Bodington campus (home of the Bodingtons VLE team). The ALT-C conference will also be held in this fine city in September, on the main University of Leeds city campus. It promises to be another great gathering of the learning technology community.

8) Berlin, Germany. It's the gathering point for the e-learning glitterati at the end of November/beginning of December every year. Online Educa Berlin regularly attracts over 2000 delegates, and in winter the city of Berlin always shimmers in the crisp, snowy atmoshere of Germany's first city. The conference is traditionally held in one of Germany's largest hotels, the Hotel Intercontinental, which is situated centrally in Budapesterstrasse, right next to the city Zoo. I met too many old friends to mention in a single blog post, but also some new friends too. And I was also honoured to be invited to speak at three separate sessions during the conference, with subject as diverse as Web 3.0, digital research ethics and Open Educational Resources. During the event, it snowed heavily, providing a magical backdrop for many meetings and much fun. All too quickly the conference was over and we were wending our ways homeward. Related blog post.

7) Christchurch, New Zealand. I was in Christchurch for my biggest gig of the year, and possibly my largest speaking engagement so far. I was one of 4 keynote speakers at the Ulearn conference, New Zealand's (and probably the Southern Hemisphere's) premier education conference, and my audience on Day 2 of the event was almost 1800 teachers. I also hosted 2 workshops during Day 3, on Teaching with Twitter, and Learning in a Web 2.0 World. My slideshow for my Twitter workshop is available for free download here. I also recorded an Edtalk on OER for the Core Ed people who were running the conference. Wandering around the city of Christchurch was an experience, not least because it was still recovering from the September quake that had damaged it so severely. Christchurch itself reminded me so very much of middle England, with quaint old buildings, punting on the River Avon amid the weeping willows, old college style architecture, and a genuine old English ambience. Prior to the conference, we were rocked by a 5.0 magnitude earthquake - and that was decidedly very un-English. Related blog post.

6) Brisbane, Australia. The Gold Coast. Brisvegas. Brizzie. It's just a great place to be. Although I was very jet-lagged, and had been travelling for over 30 hours, it was great to finally arrive in Brisbane. Even though it rained incessantly for the first 3 days I was in the city, it was still very warm, and as my mental fog began to clear, I managed to get out and about and see some of the incredible sights of this glistening city. The South bank cultural area in which I was staying, with its fascinating museums and urbane art galleries was one of the highlights. Enjoying an evening meal on the South bank with Alan Levine and Larry Johnson was another - we all just happened to be staying in the same hotel at the same time - how cool is that? While I was in Australia I also gave a keynote speech to Kaplan University online, and presented two papers at the World Computer Congress, held in the capacious Brisbane Conference and Congress Centre. Perhaps the best highlight of my visit to Brisbane though, had to be the two days I spent with Philip Long's Learning Technology team on the beautiful sub tropical campus of the University of Queensland. My grateful thanks to all of them for welcoming me and looking after me so well with their true Aussie hospitality. Related blogpost.

Tomorrow: My top 5 cities of 2010.

Around the globe by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Bridging the divide

The United Kingdom is one of the richest countries in the world, and yet, in the second decade of the 21st Century, it still has one million children without access to computers and 2 million with no access to the Internet. The digital divide is real. A Guardian article today reads:

"More than one million children in Britain live in homes without computers and a further two million have no internet connection at home, a charity said yesterday). The e-Learning Foundation said it feared the gap between rich and poor pupils' performance at school would widen unless more was done to ensure that every child can use a computer at home".

This has always been one of the most trenchant problems with technology. The divide between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' may be economic, but it has far reaching social, cultural and political consequences. Relatively, the UK is better off than most other countries in the world, but as the BBC News website reports, there are still a million children who are being left behind. As affluent as it is, the UK still cannot claim to have provided universal access to one of the most basic educational resources. The connection has already been made between access to home computers and learning excellence. It is patently clear that children who do not have home computer/internet access are at a disadvantage when it comes to completing homework, researching assignments and sustaining informal learning. In the last two decades there have been many initiatives in the UK and elsewhere to establish ubiquitous access to the web. It's an essential tool for learning. It seems these initiatives have only been partially successful, and we are still failing many of our children through lack of vision. What should be done next to bridge the digital divide?

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Bridging the digital divide by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Christmas we get, we deserve

It's Christmas Eve, and almost midnight, so I'd better make this quick. I just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and while I'm at it - how about a Happy and successful New Year too. This year, we have a white Christmas, the first time for many many years, and it's not all it's cracked up to be, I can tell you. When Bob Geldof wrote 'It's Christmas time and there's no need to be afraid', he obviously hadn't ventured out into our street. The snow that looked to lovely as it fell last week has now outstayed its welcome. It has turned to sheet ice, and we now have a skating rink outside, which is conducive to neither vertical posture nor dignity. I know this from personal experience, because I came a cropper yesterday and will have the bruises to prove it long into 2011. It's strange, but when you fall over, it doesn't matter how badly you have injured yourself - it's more important to look around and check that no-one has actually seen you fall over. But it's not all bad news.

We are having pork this year for Crimbo. Pork. See, last year's Christmas dinner was a disaster. The turkey was too big to fit in our small oven. I suggested we stuff the turkey with the oven and cook it from the inside out, but my wife was having none of it. She was worried it might invalidate the warranty. I said I didn't know that turkeys had warranties. The look I got was frostier than Christmas. Good job KFC was still open. This year we will also avoid the brussel sprouts too. Little green morons. I can't stand them. There were none left in Tesco yesterday when we did our final, last minute shopping, and my wife was distraught. I pretended to be unhappy too, and tried to look sympathetic but it's hard to, when inside you're grinning and yelling 'RESULT!' Brussle sprouts? The Belgians can keep them.

I'm a little uneasy tonight though, between you and me. I know it's a simple spelling mistake, but I don't really think it's a good idea for my kids to invite Satan to come down our chimney. Along with the glass of brandy and the carrot, I'll be laying out some garlic cloves tonight, just in case. So tomorrow it will be wrapping and tinsel all over the carpet as the kids rip open their presents, and then later, once the detritus of lunch has been dealt with, we will all gather around the box to watch some tired, mumbling old woman pontificate on the meaning of life.

Then after watching Oprah, we will watch the Queen's Christmas message too. And the reruns of old feature films. Once again we will miss the real meaning of Christmas, the reason for the season. Then next week we'll all be in town for the sales, and low and behold, in the shops they'll be removing all the Christmas trappings and trying to flog us Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. In the midst of all the commercialism and hype, I guess no-one ever makes the link between the baby in the manger and the bloke on the cross...? Oh boy. As Greg Lake once declared, the Christmas we get we deserve.

Merry Christmas everyone!

And, I can only hope, a relatively peaceful New Year.

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Weird recursion

Brian Kelly has posted a fascinating analysis of the success of my slideshow 'Web 3.0 - the way forward?'. In What's the value of using Slideshare? he addresses several pertinent issues, and I highly recommend it as a thought provoking read. The story so far: You may recall if you have read previous posts on this blog that in July this year I presented a talk for an audience of 15 teachers. My 'audience' rapidly increased 1000 per cent when I posted my slides on Slideshare. In his post Brian asks several pertinent questions related to the potential amplification affordance of services such as Slideshare. But that's not the end of the story....

Brian used the hit count statistics of my slideshow as an example of event amplification in a keynote presentation he gave in Girona, Spain, just one week later. Because I featured in his presentation, I thought I had better watch the video recording of his presentation. In doing so, I opened up another set of questions, totally unrelated to the amplification issue. What happened was that while Brian was setting up his slideshow and preparing for his keynote, the microphone and video camera were live for about 60 seconds before he started. Although this is not a long time, it's long enough and it made me think. For me, this opened up questions about whether the amplification of events through live streaming was ethical, if either a) speakers were unaware they were being streamed (I'm sure Brian had already consented and was fully aware) or b) speakers were unaware that the pictures and sounds were live when they were not expecting them to be.

Recall earlier this year how the UK's former Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught off camera but with his TV lapel microphone still live, making disparaging comments about a member of the public he had just met. Although arguably, this incident alone may not have lost him the general election, it severely damaged his reputation and standing amongst the electorate. The microphone gaffe - as its now known, even has its own Wikipedia page.

I'm not sure Brian knew the microphone and camera were live, and he certainly didn't make any gaffes or 'off the record' remarks which might have damaged his excellent reputation. But other speakers might not be so measured, and if 'off the cuff' remarks are made during open but unnoticed live streaming, what are the ethical implications? I have subsequently used image captures of Brian's keynote to illustrate this point at conferences in Nottingham and Berlin. To the observer these references within references must seem like some weird kind of recursive sequence, but I assure you, we didn't plan it.

Image source

Weird recursion by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Web 3.0 and onwards

Web 3.0: The way forward?

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

Continuing my retrospective of the year, one of the surprising highlights for me was the aftermath of a presentation I gave at a school in Exeter, South West England, in July. I was invited by Vitalmeet to present my latest views on the future of the web in education, so I chose to talk about 'Web 3.0 - the way forward?' When I arrived, the room wasn't that ideal, and the projector was on its last legs. Only 15 people turned up, and that included the organisers. Not particularly auspicous. I gave my presentation, and no-one wished to asked any questions afterwards. I made for the door... then someone asked me if they could have my slides. I promised I would post them up on my Slideshare site so they could gain access.

To say I was amazed at the response is an understatement. My Web 3.0 slideshow received 8,000 views during its first week. Within the month, the count had risen to over 15,000 views - my original audience had multiplied a thousand times. Even more valuable for me, many people commented and shared their ideas to me, which led to to write further blog posts, and publish a second, related post entitled Web x.0 and beyond. It seemed that these ideas had resonated in the blogosphere. Tracking back I could see that many people had discovered the presentation and had deemed it worthy enough to embed within their own websites and blogs, and that many more had commented on Twitter and elsewhere. It had gone viral. This for me was just more proof that the social web is extremely powerful and tools such as Twitter, blogs and resource sharing sites are very effective event amplification tools. Here it is above, one more time, for anyone who missed it.

Web 3.0 and onwards by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Living in our global village

When I reflect on my visit earlier this year to the Gambia, and my trips to other poor countries, I tend to gain some real perspective on my life. I'm left asking what will the future hold for the Gambian children in this picture? I spent some time with them all, and they are certainly as bright and enthusiastic as any kids I have met in my own country. How many of these children will survive to adulthood, how many will enjoy happy lives and achieve their dreams? None for sure will have any of the opportunities I had when I was their age. You see, in the Gambia children are forced to leave school when they reach 11, unless their parents can pay for their secondary education. Most cannot.

I can't help but feel extremely privileged to come from a part of the world where electricity, water and gas are all piped to my home, and where education is free for all children up to the age of 18. Even healthcare is free at the point of delivery to all British citizens (and of course to anyone else who is visiting the UK and gets taken ill) courtesy of the National Health Service. Hell, I even have broadband wifi in my house, and enough to feed and clothe my entire family. If I want fresh, clean water, I have simply to walk a few metres to my kitchen sink. The children in the picture have to walk several kilometres every day to fetch their water from a well in a bucket. Yes, I'm very, very fortunate indeed. I have always been affected by the following scenario, ever since I first heard it several years ago. If you want some perspective on your life, read on....

If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

Our village would be populated by 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans,
8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific....

51 would be male,
49 would be female.
82 would be non-white;
18 would be white.
67 would be non-Christian;
33 would be Christian.
80 would live in substandard housing;
67 would be unable to read.
50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation;
33 would be without access to a safe water supply;
39 would lack access to improved sanitation;
24 would not have any electricity (and of the 76 that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night).
7 people would have access to the Internet;
1 would have a college education;
1 would have HIV.
2 would be near birth; 1 near death
5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens
33 would be receiving (and trying to live on) only 3% of the income of “the village”

Information source

This post is a revised version of Our global village, first published on this blog on February 27, 2010.

Living in our global village by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Fair measures

Many forms of assessment have been tried in schools. The current UK secondary curriculum is based on a combination of summative (exams) and continuous (project based) forms of assessment, and is thought to be fair because it measures learner performance over a long period of time. And yet this approach to assessment is flawed. It's flawed because it is based on a criterion referenced system which expects all children within a given subject area (and usually within the same age group) to perfom at a previously defined level of cognitive performance. It is a standardised testing system which is applied to learning - something that can never be 'standard'. It is fairer than an exam only based assessment where a pass or a fail may depend on the health or emotional state of the student at the time of the test. It is also fairer than norm referenced testing, which pits students against each other. But it is still unfair for students who may not have the ability to perform at the expected criterion level. Many students subsequently fail and are stigmatised as a result of criterion referenced assessment. But it's the best we have, I hear some of you say. Well, if that's true, then we're in real trouble.

There's an alternative. A fairer, and more personalised form of assessment is ipsative assessment. This is where learners are measured against their own previous performances. Ipsative forms of assessment have been successfully used for children with special educational needs. It measures individual progress. It is also a form of informal measurement of skill for children who compete against themselves in video games or in sports to guage physical skills. There is no motivation better than competing against yourself. If you fail, no-one is able to pass judgement on you but yourself. If you succeed, that's the spur to push yourself onwards to gain even better skills or higher levels of knowledge.

How would ipsative assessment work in formal classroom settings? Well, there are already some hybid versions of ipsative assessment being practiced by some schools. For example, Assessing Pupil Progress (APP) is a means of measuring a learning over a period of time using students' own previous attainment scores and mapping them against their current ones. APP is good for tracking progress of individuals over time and it also helps teachers to diagnose a pupil's learning issues and deficits early and to make intervention as required. But how about letting students set their own criteria for assessment? How about some kind of negotiation with the teacher about what should be learnt and how it should be measured? Wouldn't this be more personal? Radical perhaps, and possibly more time consuming, but it's more personal too, and if it improves learning, wouldn't it be worth the extra effort?

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Fair measures by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Multiple identities

Who am I? What is my online persona? Do I present myself as the same in every situation? What do I change about me when I find myself in an unfamiliar context? How do I act differently when I'm in a reduced social cue context such as text based communication? These and many other questions are currently being addressed by researchers who are interested in the study of digital identity. It's a growth area of research for at least one very good reason. Digital identity affects us all, no matter what our age or social-economic background we come from. Technology mediated communication and pervasive computing affect everyone in the Western industrialised world. Without it we couldn't pay our bills, access information or travel distances. We rely on digital media for learning, business, entertainment and a host of other daily activities. Without knowing it, when we interact with these technologies, our behaviour changes. But there are many questions: Is my behaviour dictated by my identity? Or does my identity change because my behaviour does? Does my identity change when I am on Facebook? Do I modify my speech or the way I present myself when I'm speaking on the telephone, or on Instant Messaging, or Skype, or a webcam link? When I post up a blog, how different is that style of writing to the style I would use in say, an e-mail? Or a collaborative environment such as a wiki? And does my Second Life avatar bear any resemblance to my real life persona at all?

Dave Birch thinks there is huge scope for individuals to maintain multiple identities in cyberspace. In an interesting piece called Put your game face on, Birch points out that anonymity can enable people to reveal as much or as little of their true identity as they wish, and that this kind of false identity maintenance can lead to questionable or even dangerous behaviour. This has obvious implications for child safety.

And what of the image above? Well, yes, the pictures above are of me on my Flickr site (with a little image manipulation too, for this blogpost), and some are of me with famous British entertainers such as Matthew Kelly and Johnny Ball and well known American authors and educators such as Steven Berlin Johnson and Marc Prensky. You're probably thinking now that I spend my time seeking out celebrities to have my pictures taken with them. But the truth is, I was at the same events, got talking, and it was nice to have a picture taken to mark the occasion. All except Matthew Kelly that is. We spent time at university together and we are old friends. Together, we once did a psychology field experiment where we walked Matthew (he was already famous then) into several shops unannounced, to ask for change for a £20 note, and then observed the behaviour of the shop assistants. They changed considerably, even to the point where they broke shop rules by handing over change for a £20 note when no purchase had been made. If they couldn't get the cash register open, they were opening their own purses and wallets to hand over the change. Most interestingly, when asked a question by the unknown person, the shop assistants were all observed to answer Matthew Kelly instead. Their behaviour definitely changed. We did a control experiment with two unknown people and were almost thrown out of shops or largely ignored. My explanation for this behaviour was based on Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory in that we forced them from front stage (professional rule bound role) to back stage (relaxed and informal role) so that they broke their own rules because they had been pleasantly surprised. This celebrity effect is just one way we see changes in behaviour. If someone famous walks into the room, we stare. Or we purposefully don't stare. Either way, our behaviour is being modified. Whether or not this causes us to adopt different identities has yet to be established. But this we do know - everyone is capable of acting out multiple identities - to suit the changing environments and shifting contexts modern life presents.


Multiple identities by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Parasites!

I have been receiving a lot of requests lately to publish blog posts from freelance writers. To begin with, I was curious, because it made a change from companies trying to get advertising space on my site. So I asked to see some of the 'guest posts' that were being offered. I was disappointed.

They weren't very good, they looked rather formulaic, and as I suspected, many of them were trying to plug some kind of product or service. Some of the more subtle ones merely eulogised over the product or service without endorsing it. It's apparent to me now that there are probably commercial companies lurking behind these wannabe 'guest bloggers', who are almost certainly as freelance as I am a Dutchman.

I can see it all now: These companies must pay top dollar for their 'social media marketing' executives to sit down for hours on end in front of a screen fastidiously trawling the web for blogs that attract more than a thousand hits each month. When they spot one, the office lights flash on and off and the warning klaxon sounds. Then all the company's designated 'guest bloggers' run around like maniacs flash targeting the blogger's e-mail inbox to try to convince him that their 'freelance' post should be hosted on his blog.

There's another name for these people - parasites (not to be confused with Parisiens, who are in fact residents of the capital of France). I name them parasites because they all want to cash in on the success of someone else's endeavours. They want a free ride on the back of the winning steed. They want to hijack popular blogs to get their message across to the largest audience they can, with the minimum effort.

I have a message for these parasites: Blog off! Don't try to cash in on the success of hardworking people. Go and get your own blog to play with. That way you will grasp just how difficult it is to build up a decent blog following through hard work and a lot of hours of thinking, researching and writing. I think guest blogging is a great idea, and if you can find someone you trust, who can write a great blog post or three while you're away sunning yourself on the Costa del Sol, then go for it. However, my advice for any decent blogger who receives an e-mail from one of the wannabe social media marketing guest blogger parasites, is this: Don't say no. Don't even respond. Just delete the e-mail. Then disinfect.

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Parasites! by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Personal learning or universal education?

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the personalisation of education. The sticking point is that most education is publicly funded, the state has a major stake in how it's conducted, and therefore dictates what should be taught in schools. Because of lack of space, time and resources (you will always have this problem when the state intervenes) there is little latitude for personalised approaches and creativity is stifled. Every child gets the same content, and every child is tested in the same, standardised way. The result: children become disenfranchised and demotivated, teachers are exhausted and demoralised, schools are positioned unfairly in league tables, and governments measure success not through human achievement or creativity, but through cold, hard statistics. This is universal education, and if one size does not fit all ... tough.

Ivan Illich railed against this mindset way back in 1970 in his anarchical, visionary critique of the school system. In Deschooling Society, Illich called for personal learning through informal learning networks, and rejected the funnelling approach of mass, unidirectional, instructivist education systems. More recently, powerful modern day visionaries such as Stephen Heppell and Sir Ken Robinson are saying the same thing. They ask how we can sustain a factory model of education 'production', where children are 'batch processed' according to their age groups. It's obvious to any teacher or parent that children develop at different rates, and all have different talents and interests. I suppose we have Jean Piaget and his fellow 'stage theory' psychologists to thank for that kind of constrained thinking.

In their current configuration, says Robinson, most schools kill creativity. The picture above was taken in 1909. If those students could jump into a time machine and be transported a hundred years forward to 2010, what would they be amazed by? Jumbo jets, motorways? Satellites and HD television? The internet, medical science? Mobile phones and credit cards? They wouldn't recognise any of those. One thing they would almost certainly recognise though, would be the school classroom. It has been largely bypassed by the last century of progress.

Heppell points out that creativity could be encouraged and personal learning achieved through the use of handheld technologies such as mobile phones. When they use these tools, he says, children are in their element. When they walk into the classroom, they are told to switch off all devices, and in doing so, the school switches off the child too. Gaming consoles could also be used to personalise learning, engaging children in playful learning, something which Heppell strongly advocates. But ultimately, teachers have a vast array of personal learning resources at their disposal thanks to the social web. Students must choose their own personal tools - if they have tools imposed upon them there is little scope for personalisation. Some schools are already incorporating social media into their lessons and even allowing children to use mobile and handheld technologies during lessons. It's starting, but it's slow progress. If students are shown a range of tools and then allowed to choose which ones they would like to use, if they are allowed to create their own personal webs and choose their own connections, we might begin to see some very personal learning taking place in our schools.

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Personal learning or universal education? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 9: Broadcasting yourself

In the last in the series on digital literacies, we explore how through the web, each of us can become our own broadcasters and publishers.

The social web has shifted the balance of power away from commercial production companies in favour of the individual. The shift is from push to pull. This is a characteristic of the Web 2.0 and Edupunk movements - the do it yourself culture in which costly proprietary systems and tools are spurned in favour of haphazard, unbranded, informal mashups and loose aggregations of tools. There is a huge array of social web tools to choose from and many of them are free at the point of delivery. But more than that, it's participatory. Web 2.0 tools have made it possible for a massive, unprecedented surge in self-publication and broadcasting. The video sharing service YouTube's usage statistics should convince even the strongest sceptic that people really want to share their content. YouTube now boasts over 2 billion views over each 24 hour period and receives 24 hours of uploaded video each minute. The photosharing service Flickr claims that between 3-5 million images are uploaded every day, and hosts well in excess of 2 billion photographs and other media such as short video clips. The blogging sentinel service Technorati lists 1.2 Billion blogs at the time of writing. These are staggering statistics. People everywhere are using the web to broadcast, publish and share their ideas, opinions and creative works to the rest of the world. It may not all be great content, but here and there, you will find gems if you search for them.

The music industry has had to learn the hard way that it no longer has the monopoly on music production and distribution. It now coexists alongside independent companies and individuals, all of whom are just as intent on selling or in some cases, giving away their music to the public. Many teachers and students are doing the same thing, with educational content. Traditional publishers are having to sit up and take notice - particularly to the open access movement. Public awareness has been raised about the openness and availability of educational content. When students encounter a paywall, they will simply go elsewhere for similar content.

Podcasting, and its visual equivalent, vidcasting, are very quick means of getting your ideas out there for others to listen to or watch. Blogging your ideas over a period of time attracts readers, and if you are lucky, and produce consistent quality and quantity of posts, you will garner a loyal following of readers who will return again and again, and also comment on your posts. For many bloggers, this is all the spur they need to persist. But beware, for the social web can also be the not-so-social-web. Peer review is very informal, and can be anonymous. Either way, it can also be harsh and even abusive, so bloggers, broadcasters and publishers need to be thick skinned. This kind of digital literacy enables learners and teachers to fully engage in the social web culture, and all its rewards. Every time they post or upload new content, authors and producers makes a mark on the web and the influence of their digital footprint increases.

If you are already creating podcasts or videos, writing blogs or uploading images to the web, you will be keenly aware of the benefits and challenges. But I think you will probably agree that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

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Broadcasting yourself by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 8: Repurposing content

The ability to repurpose, remix or otherwise reuse existing content is one of the key features of the social web. Continuing my series on digital literacies, today's post is about how we can reuse existing content.

Why reinvent the wheel? If content is already out there on the web, the logical choice would be to see if it can be reused, or even adapted or altered to suit your own needs. Currently there is a trend for scholars, teachers and academics to make their content available for download and many are allowing others to repurpose or alter this content. Most of my recent slide presentations are freely available on this Slideshare site, and I publish them under a Creative Commons license that allows others to download and use them either as complete slideshows, or to select individual slides that can be inserted into their own slideshows. I also allow derivatives - that is, you can take the images or texts, or even the design themes of my slides, and repurpose them for your own use - for free. Some have used my slides for their own presentations or workshops (with full acknowledgement to me of course). Probably one of the most pleasing results for me has been when people have translated my slides into other languages. The only stipulation I make in my CC licence is that others don't make any profit from my content at my expense.

Look at the licence at the foot of this post. It indicates that if you wish to use the content you should a) attribute it to me b) not make any financial gain from it (non commercial) and c) it is share alike - that is, you can only re-use my content under the same kind of licence. All six currently available CC licence types are described here. The ethos of the social web is that we share and share alike - why hoard knowledge or ideas if they can be of benefit to others? Knowledge is like love - you can give it away, but you still get to keep it. The only barrier to sharing and repurposing of content is copyright. The web is changing rapidly, but for many, copyright laws remain archaic and arcane.

Although these outmoded, unwanted and ultimately despised copyright laws apply to internet content just like they do to books or music CDs, there are also some welcome signs of change in the digital domain. Copyleft and Creative Commons are just two of the initiatives that have emerged in recent years. Go to the Creative Commons site and check out all of the possible options that will enable you to share your own content whilst protecting your own intellectual rights, and also how you can use, repurpose and remix other people's content too. The 'mashup' - using sounds, videos, images, text or any combination of these - to make entirely new creative content, appeals to many. It can be time consuming, but also very rewarding. So, the next time you find some really useful content on the web, look out for a licence agreement somewhere on the page to see if you are allowed to re-use it.

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Repurposing content by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 7: Organising and sharing content

In yesterday's blogpost, I talked about why students should create their own content. The very act of creating content, whether it is a video, blogpost or podcast, is often with the intention that it will be shared in some way, usually on the web. Now we have the social web, there are more ways than ever to make your content available to a vast audience. But how do you share in such a way that makes it visible to the web? Answer - you organise it by 'tagging' it. You think of words that best describe your content, and then insert them into the appropriate box within the tool you are using.

Tagging content is a bit of an art. Choosing the correct descriptive words to tag your content with, can sometimes be a little hit and miss. But tag you must, if you want your content to be searchable. So this blogpost for example is tagged with a few key worlds such as 'digital literacy' and 'content creation' as well as more generic terms such as 'social web', 'blog', 'podcast' and 'video', because these terms have appeared in the text (see labels below). Because I have tagged this blogpost with those words, anyone who is interested in any of these areas, and who types those words into a search engine will, if they drill down far enough, be able to find this blog post. Tagging will also make finding content within a large list of bookmarks a lot easier. You can search for content in 'bundles' - this is useful if you only want to see the links in your list related to 'podcast' or 'audio', for example. Some tagging tools also offer tag clouds - clouds of labels that have larger or smaller font size depending on the amount of times they appear in your bookmark list.

But we can go further using tagging, so that content becomes a community artefact around which groups can discuss, interact and collaborate. Using a web service such as Delicious for example, will allow you not only to make your content more visible to those who are searching using key words, but it will also reveal to you (and to the other users) exactly who else may be interested in the same, or similar content. This is more than just bookmarking. It's social bookmarking - organising your content, and the content of others, into sets that are more useful and more socially coherent. The blue box at the end of each hyperlink displayed in my own Delicious account indicates the number of other people who have bookmarked the same link. If you click on that box, it will display them. Click on any user and you will see what other links that user has bookmarked. Some of these may have slipped past you, but you can now see them and also visit those sites and then bookmark them if you think they might be useful to you. You can also hold conversations with those others around you about the sites you find interesting- and perhaps learn even more about your mutual interests. This is the power of social bookmarking - just one of the many ways you can organise and share your content on the social web.

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Organising and sharing content by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 6: Content creation

One of the most important digital literacies students require today is the ability to create appropriate, subject specific content. Content creation is an important feature in many personal learning environment (PLE) models, and together with organising and sharing, makes up the cardinal triumvirate of skills that provides learners with a clear advantage. If you subscribe to constructivist theories of learning, you will understand why the creation of content is important in any context. We learn by doing, and we more actively engage with learning when we create artefacts that can be shared within social contexts such as communities of practice. Artefacts are a material outworking of knowledge creation, and according to Vygotsky, they can be aids to solving problems that could not be solved as effectively in their absence. In turn, such artefacts can also influence the individuals who use them to draw attention to previously unknown activities and ways of conceptualising the world around us. When I write a blog post for example, I am creating new content as I write, and then in turn, that content may reveal to me something I may have missed if I had not written the post. The blog content allows me perhaps to view a problem from a different perspective. In essence, writing a blog enables me to know what I am thinking, in a concrete, persistent and searchable form.

There are many other ways to create content besides the blog of course. The use of wikis in group learning to promote collaboration and make a record of what has been learnt is becoming more popular in all sectors of education. Podcasts, normally in the form of the audio recording of an event, are also a means of projecting and sharing content to others so that they can listen at a time and in a place (usually on the move) of their choosing. Sharing of other forms of content such as images and videos can be easily achieved with the use of photo and video sharing services such as Flickr and Youtube. I often share my slideshows through this channel, and receive feedback and other data on their subsequent uses. However, for any of the above formats of user generated content to be fully usable, it first needs to be located. Without organisation and tagging (the use of key descriptive words) such content is not searchable. In my next blog post in this series on digital literacies, I will explore this facet of the social web in more detail. Tomorrow: Organising and sharing content.

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Content creation by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Show your appreciation

This year's Edublog Awards are bigger and better than ever with over 400 nominations in 23 catagories. There are awards for best individual blogger, best individual tweeter, best new blog, best teacher blog, most influential blog post and even an award for the best use of a PLN (Personal Learning Network). I feel both honoured and humbled that this year my peers have once again decided to nominate me in the best individual blogger and best individual tweeter (as @timbuckteeth) categories. I don't really care who wins, it's just very pleasant to know that people appreciate what I'm doing in these spaces, and I'm sure most of the other nominees will feel the same.

Perhaps the most prestigious award, as always, is the Lifetime Achievement award. In this category, there are a number of luminaries, including some very good friends of mine such as Alec Couros, Alan Levine and Jane Hart. But I predict the winner of this category is going to be Sir Ken Robinson - his work, more than anyone else's this year, has influenced our thinking as educators, and he has been doing this successfully for a very long time now. If you are a regular blogger, tweeter, or social media enthusiast, you will be familiar with many, if not all of the nominees. Now it's time to vote. It's time to honour those who have contributed to our understanding and sharpened our practice in the use of tools for learning. I wish all those who have been nominated success - they are all winners for reaching the final stage. Let's all vote to tell them just how much we appreciate their contributions. Voting closes on 14th December.

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Living in the future

Berlin in December, with all that snow? It was quite magical. And a little scary, perhaps. Spare a thought for all those who attended the Online Educa Conference this year, and then found themselves stranded in Berlin because the snow had closed aiports across sub-zero Europe. I was one of the lucky ones. I made it back from Berlin to Bristol airport with only an hour or so of delays. I arrived back home at around 2 am this morning. Others are still in Berlin, waiting for their flights to be rescheduled, and the weather doesn't look as though it is going to let up....

But travelling to OEB10 (for that was the official hashtag) was worth the risk. It was worth it because Berlin is a great city, and the location for the conference - the Hotel Intercontinental - is an excellent venue. The company was great too. I met up with many, many old friends, and made some great new ones too. Some, such as Clark Quinn and Chahira Nouira have been familiar Twitter buddies for some time, but to meet them in person was, as always, a very great pleasure. I was also the man responsible for connecting together two of the luminaries of the learning world during the Educa speaker's reception. Here's the picture of the first meeting of the guru of informal learning, Jay Cross, and the prime mover behind the Horizon Report, Larry Johnson. It's an honour to know and have conversations with such wonderfully intelligent, influential and passionate people. One of the keynote speakers on Day 1 asked us if we were disappointed in the future. Shouldn't we by now be living on the Moon, and travelling around using personal jetpacks? Well, the keynote speakers on Day 2 brought us back down to earth with a pragmatic look at how technology is being used to support and enhance learning.

Larry Johnson's opening keynote had many of the OEB delegates smiling and murmering their praise - his photographic images were breathtaking, evocative, emotional and engaging, and were fitting embellishments to his narrative. Larry talked eloquently and movingly about his own family - from his grandparents to his granchildren (pictured left with an image of his mother and grandson) as he traced the history of technology down through the years. Our perceptions of technology, he told his audience, are not the same as those of our children. Many used to gather around the television to share events as they happened as broadcast by the news networks. Now, says Larry, we are the network. We are the ones who create and distribute the breaking events from around the world. His optimistic perspective on the future sees young people and older ones too, populating shared digital spaces, learning from each other as a living network.

Josie Fraser's keynote followed, focusing on the needs of young people in a digital age. Josie, who in 2008 was awarded the UK's Learning Technologist of the Year award, is these days discovered as the e-Learning Strategist for Leicester City Council. She concentrated on digital literacies, and argued that they are vital because they extend beyond the functional into the socio-cultural in their influence. Josie also dealt with issues of e-safety and digital identity, applying danah boyd's categorisations of digital affordances, including scalability, persistency and searchabillity to illustrate how images, text and sounds can work for good or for bad. These features, she argued, brought many challenges to schools in the digital age. Josie also sees an optimistic future despite the challenges we are facing. Larry Johnson has a favourite phrase: 'I love living in the future'. OEB showed us many glimpses into this future. I don't think we will be too disappointed.

Living in the future by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.